KUNO Steering Group Nominations 2022
Listed in an alphabetical order by last name:
NABIL AHMED
Trondheim Academy of Fine Art (ntnu)
I am currently a professor at Trondheim Academy of Fine Art at NTNU.
I am keen to contribute to the growth of the KUNO network as I see how much our students – from bachelor to PhD – benefit from the various programmes run and supported by KUNO.
My teaching and research focuses on environmental and climate justice. In particular I run a research and design studio that produces spatial and visual evidence to support legal cases and advocacy/journalism projects on environmental justice. We present our work in various forums and exhibitions worldwide. Next year I will be starting CLIMATE RIGHTS, a Norwegian research council project. If elected, I will be looking to see how my teaching and research can enrich the KUNO network.
bjarki bragason
iceland university of the arts
With this letter I want to express my interest in being part of the Kuno steering group. As an art educator I believe this network is an extremely valuable platform to join together the dynnamicism that exists in our different institutions. I would love to have the opportunity to work with partners from across the network and seek to bring together ideas that excist in our different schools to further advance the opportunities of our students to get a diverse view at what art making can be.
As a student I had the opportunity twice to be part of intensive courses, one which had three parts. It created a platform of colleagues which is still present in my practice as an artist today, almost 20 years later. As a teacher, I‘ve been part of making two intensive courses, Border as a place, in collaboration with colleagues from the Baltic-Nordic context, and I continue to be inspired by what can happen when you bring together diverse ways of approaching subjects. Kuno is unique in its collaborative and light character, a system where ideas can relatively quickly take shape and become practiced. This is a phenomena to protect and continue developing, especially in times as ours where dialogue and collaboration is as pressing as ever.
As a member of the steering group I would want to get to know the Kuno institutions as well as possible and meet as many partners as I could, listening to ideas in our network for how we can bring students together, increase the frequency of exchange and develop projects that foster continued and long term dialogue.
HARRI MONNI
Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts in HelsinkI
My name is Harri Monni and I have a position as lector in the study area of painting in Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts in Helsinki, since 2010 (before that I worked as a younger lector at Konstfack in Stockholm from 2006 to 2010 (all in all I have been working since 1997 as teacher in arts). I am born in Helsinki and have been living both in Sweden and Finland and now based in Helsinki. I want to apply for a position in the KUNO steering group.
In my work as a lecturer, I am interested in how to try to define and manage the varying concepts of art, the concepts that are in flux and particularly the concepts of contemporary painting in its many hybrid forms. My aim is investigating concepts of both material and theory, trying to implement them together in a pedagogical educational practice and form and build/create shared knowledge together with students and colleagues in my teaching. Emphasizing the importance of building bridges with other artforms and ideas as well as with artists and thinkers from different fields. An important part of this is international relations, as for example in the many courses and exchange exhibitions I have had a pleasure to run at the Academy of Fine arts in Helsinki. For me the art education takes place in the ideas of openness and interactive communication. I see art education as a dialogue-based practice, where respect for the other, the networking and internationalization is fundamental.
The reasons that I apply for the board in Kuno Steering group are: I wish to work for to keep and bring forth higher Art Education of The Nordic-Baltic region, to network over the borders reworking and remaking possibilities for a democratic future in a changing political and economic climate. When many countries now put military issues in a hardening political climate, increasing their military budgets, there is a threat of diminishing humanist and cultural development in the economical inflation, that Art education will suffer from setbacks in form of less fundings.
Kuno network is an important possibility to work for keeping the higher Art education strong and alive with the inclusiveness and generosity, not forgetting to work for the collaborative and experimental nature of artmaking in upcoming rightwing political environment (the Swedish election results and how for not so long ago the Real Finns party announced that the only real art was a national socialist art from Finnish golden age)
Kuno is a unique opportunity to network in different levels, in a pedagogical possibility for a renewal, from the students ability to partake in different courses, either express or longer courses in various Art Academies in Nordic and Baltic countries (with all the benefits to be able to network and be exposed to variety of ideas and knowledge) to the possibility for the teachers mobility and development over the borders and to network and create sustainability with the representatives for the Art Academies. KUNO has opened valuable possibilities for co-operation that is in our responsibility to keep and develop.
I have had been able to be part of KUNO teachers exchange program for example with Valand Academy of Fine Art (to take a part in final critics, the examinations of painting students exhibition with Lector Peter Ojstersec, who I invited to Helsinki to have a lecture and partake in the seminars of study area of painting) and with the University of Fine Arts in Bergen (when inviting Professor Steven Dixon to have several courses together with me. An intense theory seminar/reading group and a course that is a part of what we call for Thematic theory studies. Those courses were also opened to Kuno-students to take part in) I have been participating in the following KUNO conferences during the years. 2011 Oslo, 2012 Vilnius, 2013 Stockholm,2014 Copenhagen, 2015 Riga, 2016 Trondheim. 2018 Helsinki I had a talk: Ways of collaboration. What can we gain as KUNO institutions? Examples of teacher mobility, intensive courses, joint programs and projects, followed by group discussions. Other speakers were: Laura Kuusk (Estonian Academy of Arts) and Börje Helenius (Aalto University) Moderated by Alma Ragnarsdóttir and Ulla Tissari.
